When is a Fact Not a Fact?

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The environmental change – in terms of the media messages we’re exposed to – changes how we behave. Some of those people who previously looked at the world in terms of how much status they had, and what more they could do to boost it, now have a partially competing desire to protect what they have.

I say “partially competing” because nothing emphasises your status quite like money, so the prospect of not having so much is particularly worrying to the status-seeker.

The upshot of all this is that, when the opportunity to buy arrives, a competing psychological desire is ‘in play’. And, of course, once you’ve noticed that Henry hasn’t gone straight to the last page of the wine list you take note and feel much more comfortable doing the same yourself next time the wine list is passed to you.

And, for this reason, I’m confidently predicting that sales of fine wine will continue to fall.

I would guess that most of you would agree.

But I made all of that up (sorry).

I have no idea what’s happening to fine wine sales at the moment.

But when I had this conversation with someone about the real product category whose sales, I believe, are turning in the recession, his passion for the product completely clouded the debate.

And that, I suppose, is the moral of this particular article. It’s relatively easy to be objective if you’re ambivalent about the subject matter.

It’s much harder to achieve this if the subject is a product you’ve bought recently, your favourite product, or even your own company’s product.

So, when it comes to discussing behavioural data, which is always factual but also always open to a degree of interpretation, it’s worth stripping away as much emotion as possible.

If you’re discussing your business with your colleagues from the same business, present the issues you face as being a case study on another business and you may very well find you get a completely different set of suggestions about what they (you) should do.

P.S. If you’re curious, the product category that is “doing great” or “headed for decline”, depending on who you ask, is organic food.

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